Green and Growing
by quicklime
Summary: In her last year at Hogwarts, it is discovered that Hermione Granger is gifted with an extremely rare magical talent. One that, it seems, may negate all her others—-and bring her an unforseen connection with Severus Snape.
1. Chapter 1

Green and Growing  
  
By quicklime  
  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
  
Author's note:  
  
Well, I don't want to give away too much of the story just yet. Suffice it to say, one of the major supporting characters is going to be an OC-if you don't like that sort of thing, don't read this. The same goes for Snape/Granger romances, which this will *eventually* turn into.  
  
As always, none of the characters in this belong to the author and no profit is being made.  
  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
  
Chapter 1  
  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
  
She was overenthusiastic and far too confident, Snape mused. She had a tendency to lean towards arrogance (after all, she was a Gryffindor.) She was, for all her brains, desperately impractical sometimes and dangerously impulsive. She frequently didn't know when to give up, and, honestly, she was damned irritating.  
  
But Hell on earth, but the girl was a Godsend.  
  
He would never admit it, of course, but he often wondered how he had ever managed without her. Or, worse, how he was going to manage when she graduated.  
  
It had been midway through her Sixth year when Hermione Granger had become his unofficial Potions assistant. It had become official-ized at the start of Seventh, which, he knew, still irritated her, as she had been forced to choose between the Assistant position and Head Girl. (It hadn't been a choice, really, although certainly that was what would go on her transcripts. Being Head Girl would have made her too much of a target, and she was enough of that already. Better to be quietly secluded in the dungeons--it would look nearly as good when University rolled around, and meanwhile keep her, at least on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, more-or-less out of trouble.)  
  
He had, he supposed, been angling for her when he mentioned to the Headmaster that it would be nice if he, like many of the other teachers, could find a student from one of the upper forms suitable for a few extra-curricular hours of service. Of course, he had gone on, there had been rather a string of particularly idiotic students for the past few years, and he rather doubted there was any one of those morons up to the challenge.  
  
He had then allowed the bemused headmaster to convince him, after nearly half an hour, to take the one he'd had his eye on the whole time, both of them knowing the eventual conclusion of the conversation, but both retreating into polite formality and genteel argument because it was what they always did, and both men saw the humor contained within.  
  
Minerva was still fuming. It wasn't enough that he was perfectly happy to victimize her entire house. No. He was Severus Snape. He had to steal her best student as well.  
  
If it was worthwhile for nothing else, the fact that she hadn't spoken to him for months was enough.  
  
But of course, out of the context of class, in which she had been since first year, and still remained, a dreadful nuisance, and into an arena where every overactive, sparking brain cell could be put to use, Granger was something of a miracle.  
  
Hermione, even after several months of routine, wasn't quite comfortable around him yet, and Snape was, well, not really comfortable around anyone, but they'd worked out "companionable silence" reasonably well. She was nervous around him, and he hadn't quite gotten over the fact that she was a Gryffindor yet, and thus someone to be held in, at best, contempt, at worst, hatred.  
  
But during their slow evenings of potions work, sleeves rolled up and hair pulled back, she was just another gifted witch, chopping or grinding or stirring, when he needed another pair of hands, with nearly as much skill as he did. Or, sometimes, sitting, looking particularly small and young at his huge, dark oak desk, grading papers nearly as harshly as Snape himself. (Well, as far as grades, anyway. Hermione had been raised in an environment of "constructive criticism," and did not believe that belittling small childrens' intelligence, work ethic and personality based on a few homework assignments was particularly beneficial to their overall education.  
  
But after a while, she saw the humor in it anyway, and after a few months, the tidy red cursive was no less feared throughout the school than the jagged red scrawl.  
  
Her hide had thickened, over the months, to his insults, to the point that she wondered why they had ever bothered her so much in the first place. Of course, he was less insulting as their working relationship progressed, unless of course she managed to make some mistake, in which case he certainly let her have hell. Not that he ever managed to compete with her own irritation at any small fumble in a skill that, in her mind, should have been perfected long ago.  
  
But potions was a frustrating art. He knew that perfectly well.  
  
Summer hadn't really been a break for either of them. Hermione had spent most of it with the Order, and Snape, although firmly opposed to actually living with the ragtag group, had visited, reluctantly, quite often. And every time he saw her, there was the occasional potion to brew or lesson plan to go over or theory to bounce. So by mid-September, they were back in stride, tolerant of each other's company to a degree that obviously sickened her friends (another plus.) Hermione, to his amusement, had been rather resentful of the fact that she'd been forced to choose -Snape- over Head Girl, but that too had eventually faded into the oddly satisfactory arrangement that they'd worked out.  
  
It was a few days past Halloween (it had fallen on a Friday night, to everyone's delight) and they were working, as usual, in silence.  
  
Hermione was chopping Formierre root, her sleeves rolled up and forearms. He found himself watching her. Her movements were precise; chop, chop, chop, pause to dip the knife blade in the small bowl of water at her elbow, chop, chop, chop. Her hands and arms bore the marking of one who worked too long at potions; small scars, from slips of the knife and splashes of various burning liquids.  
  
Her hands looked very much like his. Mildly scarred, un-calloused, pale and graceful. She didn't seem to care much about the scars. (Her first one, a splash of boiling oil, had been responded to with a puzzled, annoyed look and a: "Oh. Er. Ow" and a: "Burn lotion, second cupboard on the right in the back of the office" and that had pretty much been it.) And he knew perfectly well how painful boiling oil was on sensitive skin, and how nervous boiling anything could make you after you'd been burned for the first time.  
  
He had been wondering, for a long time, if she would eventually choose a career in Potions--she was undoubtedly well-suited for it, and it might be nice if he could remember, in his old age, inspiring a love of his art (rather than just inspiring fear) in at least one student.  
  
She was looking uneasy today (she often did, in his presence) and very much absorbed in her work, which was going far slower than usual. So it happened that she didn't notice when Snape walked up behind her, to gaze at the chopping.  
  
"Miss Granger," he said calmly, and she started, violently, like a rabbit, scattering root bits over her cutting board, jarring one elbow against her water bowl and dropping her knife to the floor, where it landed perilously close to her boot. "I see you are attempting to chop your fingers off. However, as your Professor, I am going to advise you not to do so."  
  
"Aha," she said, panicked. "you startled me..." She trailed off.  
  
He raised an eyebrow. "Clearly."  
  
"Um...I'll clear this up..."  
  
"You will indeed," he said coldly. "I do recall telling you not to come if ever you were unfit to do your work."  
  
She rallied a bit at 'unfit.' "I'm fine, Professor. I'm just a little jumpy, and you snuck up on me."  
  
"I did, did I? Why on earth, I wonder, would it occur to me to do a thing like that?"  
  
"Oh, er, I didn't mean...that is to say, I didn't notice you there and so...you didn't sneak up on me, of course, I just wasn't...and I,er, got startled."  
  
"Why, then, Miss Granger, are you so easily startled this evening?" He picked a small section of root ('chop with a sharp knife at an angle to between ten and twelve centimeter segments...') secretly admiring the craftsmanship.  
  
She shrugged.   
  
"Miss Granger."  
  
"Oh, it's nothing really...You wouldn't be interested. It was just that I was planning on asking you for a recommendation for University and then I decided that I probably shouldn't since you clearly have enough to do already, but that if I asked Professor McGonagall she might still be angry at me for choosing an Assistanceship in Potions instead of Transfiguration, and that it would look odd if the Professor I had my Assistanceship with wasn't the one who wrote it. You know, I don't think Assistanceship is actually a word," she took a deep breath. "But anyway, that's why I'm a little nervous."  
  
He almost laughed. He managed to transfer the humor into a single raised eyebrow.  
  
"It isn't."  
  
"No, I didn't think so."  
  
"That's it, then?"  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"You realize that there's no reason I wouldn't be willing to write a recommendation for you?"  
  
She looked blank. "You'll do it?"  
  
He was exasperated. "Clear this up and put the roots in one of the large glass jars, and go away. You can finish this on Thursday, if you're feeling somewhat more competent."  
  
"Oh. Alright."  
  
"With another two hours on Friday afternoon to make up for the time you lost this evening."  
  
She almost smirked. Only Snape would give her detention, so to speak, for her volunteer work. "Yes, sir." (They had an unspoken agreement that any mistakes made on their evenings together would not count against her house points, and, while he could assign any extra work her found appropriate, words like 'detention' and 'punishment' would under no circumstances be used.)  
  
Snape went back to the essays he was grading, and she cleared up the roots and put them in the jar. She rinsed off the knife and put it back in the knife drawer. She washed off the cutting board and put it back in its cupboard, emptied and rinsed the water dish and put in back under the sink---she wiped down the counter with a damp cloth and left, careful to close the door quietly behind her and was halfway up to Gryffindor tower before she allowed herself a sigh of relief and a slight smile.  
  
So that was all fine then. The Boys would fume and fuss about her being given extra work, voluntarily spending any more time with Snape than absolutely necessary, refusing to go to Hogsmead for the second weekend in a row because she wanted to study for her NEWTS and whatever else was bothering them about her lately. But that was nothing to worry about really. Between The Boys and what they saw as friendly, helpful advice on not studying to hard and learning to have fun and Snape's near-constant, skillful, subtle barbs, there wasn't a lot that could get under her skin these days.  
  
Anyway, he was almost certainly going to write a recommendation for her now (her fear, in actuality, had been more asking him than the prospect that he'd refuse to do it.)  
  
He was. Back in the classroom, Snape sighed with amusement, and put down the red pen that had been engaged in one of his more successful insults to date ("You would do well to start cheating off a more adept student, Mister Luctefeld") to shake his head.   
  
So McGonagall was still angry with her, was she?  
  
Hah. Marvelous.  
  
He grinned, a rare expression indeed, at least when he wasn't alone. Truth to tell, he was rather fond of the acerbic Headmistress, and without the fun of, in turns, baiting and being baited by her, life at Hogwarts would have been a great deal more boring. She was one of its redeeming features, and those, in Snape's opinion, were few and far between.  
  
Students were certainly rarely numbered among them.  
  
Even Granger, he had to admit, had her irritating moments. He'd chased her out that evening, true enough, but not really because she'd spilled a chopping-board of root fragments. More because he'd learned from experience that if he didn't say something cruel and dismiss her, assigning some token reprimand, he would have to hear about it all evening.  
  
("I'm sorry about those roots, really I am, Professor!")  
  
And there was nothing more irritating than being apologized to for something insignificant for hours on end. He'd groveled long and often enough in his life to develop an extreme distaste for it, and that was something the Granger girl could not for the life of her seem to grasp.  
  
Gods forbid she ever do anything -really- wrong or he'd never, ever hear the end of it.  
  
He shuddered.  
  
He hadn't asked her what she intended to study. Likely she hadn't decided yet. Likelier, she would spend several years double-majoring before she found some noble, holy cause to pursue until her death.  
  
Silly chit. ("You'll do it?")  
  
He snorted. Of course he'd write that miserable, brilliant little brat her recommendation. And for the love of Merlin, she'd better not ever get her hands on it. 


	2. Chapter 2

Green and Growing  
  
By quicklime  
  
*************  
  
Author's note:  
  
Well, I don't want to give away too much of the story just yet. Suffice it to say, one of the major supporting characters is going to be an OC-if you don't like that sort of thing, don't read this. The same goes for Snape/Granger romances, which this will *eventually* turn into.  
  
As always, none of the characters in this belong to the author and no profit is being made.  
  
*************  
  
Chapter 2  
  
*************  
  
She was feeling particularly cheerful the next ay. He found it slightly irritating, but if she was back to her usual, non-knocking-over-ingredients self, he wasn't really going to complain.  
  
He met her unusually bubbly "Good evening, Professor!" with a noncommittal grunt, and after she'd finished the preparations she'd left off on Tuesday, he set her to grading papers.  
  
He sent her back to Gryffindor Tower after only an hour and a half; their sessions rarely had any set times other than those determined by simmers and slow boils, but it was rare that he would keep her for less than two or three hours. He didn't seem particularly annoyed with her, or in any worse a mood than she usually found him in, although Snape was astonishingly hard to read when he wanted to be. She also didn't question his decision, not even the rather obvious "do I still have to come in on Friday if you don't have anything for me to do now?" If he was in a nasty mood, she certainly wasn't going to provoke him. And if he wasn't...well, she wasn't stupid enough to risk it. He didn't like being questioned.  
  
Not much happened between Thursday evening and Friday afternoon.  
  
*************  
  
Thursday night, she relaxed for a few hours in the big squashy armchairs in the common room. Harry and Ron cajoled her into a few games of Wizard's Chess (by the time their third rolled around, it was Harry and Hermione together versus Ron, who won anyway, and all three became thoroughly bored.) They had long since given up on trying to convince their female friend that being Snape's assistant was thoroughly bonkers, (after their original efforts had been less than entirely successful, but Ron occasionally made a half-hearted attempt.  
  
"I don't know how you can put up with that greasy git..."  
  
"Ron," Hermione said firmly. "If you're going to start that again, I'm not going to pay you any attention."  
  
"But seriously, 'Mione, he's-"  
  
"Thanks, Ron. It's a new conditioner." She smiled sweetly.  
  
"This is ridiculous! You can't--"  
  
"Yeah, I think we might have a few warm weeks before the cold weather kicks in," she said.  
  
"You're not even going to listen?"  
  
"I think Hagrid is looking well, don't you?"  
  
Harry watched the exchange with a bemused look on his face. Eventually, defeated. Ron gave up. Hermione sat back with the satisfied smile of one who knows how to manipulate males, and manipulate well.  
  
The conversation drifted, which was nice, but eventually any drifting conversation with Harry and Ron came to Quidditch. And Quidditch, particularly as Ron was still a little ticked at her, eventually led to Krum.  
  
"...what about him?" she snapped defensively.  
  
"That's what we want to know," Harry said patiently. "You haven't talked about him for weeks."  
  
"Maybe there isn't anything to say," she said.  
  
"Maybe," said Ron.  
  
"Or maybe," she added venomously, "there isn't anything to say to insensitive clods who insist on this ridiculous interrogation every couple of days!"  
  
Both boys blinked at her. "You've definitely been spending too much time with Snape."  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes.  
  
"So you broke up," Harry prompted gently.  
  
"No. I don't know. I can't really tell. I'm no good at this sort of thing."  
  
"How can you not know?" Ron asked bluntly.  
  
"I haven't talked to Viktor in a while...the last letter he sent me was a week and a half ago and I didn't respond to it."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"It's complicated."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
There was a pause. "Do you -want- to break up with him?"  
  
"No!" They looked surprised. She sounded awfully vehement about that.  
  
"But...you haven't talked to him in ages..." Ron ventured.  
  
"Oh, I don't want to go out with him," she said patiently, as if it was perfectly clear. "I just don't want to be the one to say it's over."  
  
"Oh," said Ron. "That's a little..." he trailed off.  
  
Harry finished the thought for him. "You're a coward."  
  
Hermione bristled. "That's not fair! I don't want to hurt him!"  
  
Harry looked at her skeptically. "Do you think you're hurting him now, by not talking to him?"  
  
She shrugged. "Dunno."  
  
"And you don't know because you haven't talked to him."  
  
"Well..."  
  
Ron looked at her. "It -is- cowardly, Mione. Don't you just want it over and done..."  
  
She shrugged again. "Look, I appreciate the efforts guys, but this really isn't any of your business. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and eventually I'll figure out." She rose. "Until then," she threw over her shoulder. "But out."  
  
Both stood, as if to go after her. "'Mione...!"  
  
"I have homework to do, guys. I imagine you do too." And she disappeared into the forbidden girl's dorms.  
  
They looked at each other, that universal male expression of "Women."  
  
"She's been...weird lately," Harry said.  
  
"Moody."  
  
"Mean."  
  
Ron sighed. "Snape-like."  
  
There was a long pause, while they both absorbed this.  
  
"Prettier though," Harry said after a while.  
  
It was worrying both of them, though. (Not Hermione's newfound penchant for sarcasm, or her and Snape's relative good looks, but Krum.) She had, for a while, been deeply fond of him, at least as far as they could tell, and for a few weeks the sight of him waiting at the gates on Hogsmead weekends, carrying a bouquet of roses or a book and watching carefully for her had not been unfamiliar.   
  
They'd been...serious. Both boys knew this, although both secretly wished it wasn't true, and certainly neither had actually been told anything. But they'd known her too long, and recognized when girl-talks with Ginny, (and even, eventually, Parvati and Lavender) had become longer and more frequent.  
  
Harry and Ron found it deeply disturbing. And they'd known, later, when Hermione stopped smiling so much when a familiar grey-and-brown owl appeared, and when the appearances it made became more and more infrequent, when the flowers in the vase on top of her dresser wilted and were not replaced and when Hermione's brief, vague, fleeting almost-interest in Quidditch vanished overnight.  
  
Harry, at least, saw her descent into the dungeons as just another symptom of a girl trying to find something to occupy her time.   
  
Krum was, at least unofficially, out of the picture. Eventually, they had all forgotten just how much she had once liked him. Harry and Ron knew it was their masculine rights as friends to beat him to a bloody pulp if her broke Hermione's heart, but both were aware that it was far more likely to be the other way around, which was really just as worrying.  
  
Moody, they thought to themselves. Cruel. Cowardly. Heartbreaker, they thought, and winced away from the word.  
  
*************  
  
Cowardly she may not have been, but moody was spot-on. Even Hermione recognized that much. But her last year at Hogwarts was stressful, couldn't anyone understand that? She was constantly worried, about NEWTS, about grades, about war and Muggle-born status and disturbingly vulnerable parents. The fragile feelings of some Bulgarian young man who ought to know better than to get so attached to her (if indeed he still was, which she doubted) weren't high on her list of priorities. Nor, apparently, were the fragile feelings of her best friends, she thought with a wave of guilt.  
  
Neither she nor Snape, in one of their many unspoken agreements, ever mentioned either of them. She knew perfectly well that no matter how tolerable she managed to be, mention of Harry would never be anything but poison to the man. So, obviously, she was smart enough to avoid it. And Snape, to his credit, even if he had given the boys a detention the night before, never brought them up either.  
  
As she suspected, he really didn't have a lot for her to do.   
  
"Grade these," he said shortly, handing her a stack of third year homework assignments. "Here's the rubric. And -try- not to go as easy on this lot as you did those snivelling second-years. You managed to convince an entire year that they were unmitigated geniuses. And let me assure you, that was -not- conducive to a peaceful classroom."  
  
"I'll try, sir," she said, suppressing a smile, and retreated to the last lab table, nearest the back of the classroom to start.  
  
It was tiresome work, and Hermione had to be careful with the time; too little on the papers, and her work was slipshod. Too long, according to Snape, and she was daydreaming. Well, she was going to do her best not to get on his bad side.  
  
Nobody wanted to get on Severus Snape's bad side.  
  
Ans so it was absolutely amazing, incredibly unthinkable, when a tall, dark-skinned woman would side cheerfully into the dungeon classroom, give him a wink and a brilliant grin, and an idle:   
  
"Look sharp, Sev! I brought presents!"  
  
Snape looked up, and did not rise from his seat behind the huge desk. "Hello, Nikita," he said darkly, unfazed.  
  
She flashed a saucy smile. "You should be nicer to me, you know, Sev my dear, as I've just brought you several million galleons worth of..." She caught sight of Hermione, blinking in astonishment, and trailed off. "Um..."  
  
"She's fine," Snape said. "Hermione, your papers are not going to grade themselves."  
  
"Hermione, is it?" the woman said with a smile. "I'm Nikita Amanti. And I'm sure if Sev thinks you're alright then I shouldn't worry."  
  
"Pleased to meet you," Hermione said, a little shyly, and went, at a sharp glare from the Potions Master, back to the papers, although not for long. ('Sev'?) This mysterious visitor was far too interesting.  
  
Nikita Amanti was a shocking figure to see in Hogwart's dungeon. She was beautiful, tall and dark, with a slender, shapely figure-which wouldn't have been so unusual if said shapely figure hadn't been encased in jeans and a t-shirt, underneath a long, worn black peacoat. She carried a large leather satchel on one shoulder, and it was this that she laid carefully on the closest lab table to the front of the classroom. Hermione, from the back of the room, had an excellent view of the proceedings.  
  
From it, Nikita Amanti extracted dozens upon dozens of small glass jars, filled with plant cuttings.   
  
Some were just loose in the jars, but some were packed in water, some in other liquids. There were small paper labels on each; Hermione could make out that there were several different colored inks on each label, but was too far away to read anything.  
  
Some of the jars were capped, some were stoppered with various materials (was that lead?) and all were...  
  
She couldn't describe, even to herself, what the plants inside looked like. They glowed. They sparkled. They were, simultaneously, beautiful and disturbing.  
  
Glowing, sparkling, unearthly and mysterious, and thoroughly unlike any growing thing she'd seen before--at least not while she was awake.  
  
They were puge magic, more than anything else she'd ever seen in this world where the magical was mundane. She caught her breath, bit her lip.   
  
"I already gave the live samples to Sprout," the woman said. "Who was, may I add, a great deal more grateful than you, so far."  
  
"It's amazing, Nikita," he said, gentler and softer than Hermione had ever seen him. "Thank you."  
  
"That was enthusiastic," Nikita said sarcastically, but without real venom.   
  
"I still can't understand your labels," he said.  
  
She sighed. "It's really very simple. It's all color-coded. Blue is for the liquid they're packed in. O is for oil, W is for water, and anything else is specified. Warnings are in red-'do not combine with such-and-such,' 'don't heat,' 'don't expose to air,' that sort of thing. The lead-stoppered ones are all of the latter sort. Be careful of those. Honestly, I don't know what you can do with them, but you're the only person I can think of who might be able to manage something. Um. Black is general information, green is anything else." There was a lot of green writing on the jars.  
  
He picked up one of the lead-stoppered jars, and examined it. "You could buy a country with the price of half of these," he said softly.  
  
"Don't start with that again."  
  
One corner of his mouth quirked in half a smile. (Half a smile more than Hermione had ever seen on him.) "Fine, then. How was Brazil?"  
  
She sighed. "Very sunny. Very Brazillian. Not a lot of plants to speak of, so I cut the sabbatical short." She picked up one of the jars. "Dragon mint. Very useful stuff."  
  
"I know. Hard to work with, though."  
  
"Not for me."  
  
"Well of course..." he trailed off, watching her quizically.  
  
She shrugged. "You and me, Sev. We're going to change the world."  
  
He frowned at that, and glanced up. Hermione was staring at the rows of jars, eyes glowing, lips slightly parted-and most certainly -not- grading papers.  
  
"Miss Granger. When I gave you those papers to grade, I did not realize they included staring, braindead, at matters that do not concern you." It was a sharp comment, in his most acerbic voice, and usually something like that would have made her jump, but the effect was entirely spoiled by Nikita's snickering.  
  
"Haven't changed a bit, Sev, have you?" she asked, and Snape ignored her.  
  
"I'm sorry, sir," Hermione said. "It's just that...well...what -are- those?"  
  
He frowned at her. Nikita was busy trying to organize the flora into groups. "Plants, Miss Granger."  
  
He didn't sound sarcastic, which was odd. They were obviously plants. "I know that, sir. It's just that I've never seen anything like that. They're just so beautiful."  
  
His expression froze, and Nikita's head snapped up so fast that she must have given herself whiplash.  
  
"WHAT?" there was no snarl in voice, just absolute, total astonishment.  
  
"Oh dear," Nikita said to herself quietly.  
  
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked, totally confused.  
  
He strode over to where she was still sitting, surrounded by untouched assignments. He towered over her, dark and dangerous, and held one of the jars threatening inches from her nose. "You," he said, "can see this?"  
  
"Er, yes, sir." she said. "Can't you?"  
  
"No," he said darkly, and nodded towards Nikita. "But -she- can."  
  
"Oh dear," Nikita said again. "I think we'd best go see the Headmaster." 


End file.
